My boss is a tyrant. She screams, flies off the handle, can’t effectively communicate her needs, and yet she expects me to work productively with a smile on my face each and every day. There are days I’m ready to have a serious conversation with her explaining why I’m going to quit and take a better, higher paying job with someone who will respect me.

But since she’s only 32-inches tall and is currently running around with a yogurt-baked bean slime streak in her hair while hitting the sofa with a squeaky hammer, I am reminded why I’m holding back.

Throughout my 10-plus years in the workforce, I have worked some very interesting jobs in which I have dealt with people of all temperaments. As a senior editor of two well-regarded magazines, I have met dignitaries and celebrities in the art and design world. As a film and television location manager and, before that, a production assistant, I dealt directly with movie producers and directors, famous actors and musicians.

In other words, I have dealt with my share of egotistical, self-righteous blow-hards who can sometimes be unbelievably ill-mannered. But, it wasn’t until I became a mother that I realized how good I had had it back then even with the most egregious of adult tempers.

No matter how bad any of those other jobs got or how out-of-control some of the demands I had to negotiate, I never came across anyone who thought it proper form to disagree by head-butting me. To finish reading this post, click here.

Well done Tiffany. My smallest boss is the boss of her older sister and forbid her to make madeleines with us two days ago because the madeleines were going to get sick. The older sister had a 102 fever. Fair enough. Whatever boss says.